Woman with bone cancer gets new 'knee' with foot attached backwards

Jordon Moody, 22, from Hessle, England is adapting to her new 'knee' after her thigh bone was removed due to a recurrent bone cancer in her left leg.

According to The Telegraph, Jordon was earlier diagnosed with bone cancer in her left thigh and underwent chemotherapy and an operation to remove the tumour.

However, the cancer came back again last year and she faced the possibility of amputating her entire leg to keep the cancer from spreading to other parts of her body.

Fox News reported that doctors in St James's Hospital in Leeds, England, gave Jordon three treatment options: chemotherapy, amputation of her left leg or rotationplasty about the knee.

Rotationplasty is a surgical procedure in which the lower limb is rotated 180 degrees and reattached to the hip so that the rotated ankle functions as a knee joint, allowing the patient to continue walking by fitting a prosthesis below the new 'knee'.

Jordon agreed to the surgery, as "it seemed like (she) would have a better quality of life as (she) could have a prosthesis fitted."

The young woman underwent the operation at Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in Birmingham in July, where her left thigh bone was removed and her lower leg was reattached to her hip.

In an interview with Sky News, Jordon's orthopaedic surgeon Lee Jeys shared the challenges of rotationplasty, saying "we had to keep the nerves intact so that the foot would still be working."

He added that "it was effectively more of a transplant than an amputation."

After the surgery, Jordon underwent rehabilitation to rewire her brain to use her backward-facing ankle as her new 'knee'. She said: "that took a lot of getting used to. I pretty much got the hang of it now."

She has also stepped forward to publicise her surgery to raise funds for the Stand Up to Cancer campaign in UK, and hopes to have her prosthesis fitted soon and walk unaided before Christmas.

minlee@sph.com.sg